Mages, ten-man raiding, and other things that are awesome.

I’m sure our raid leader, Vosskah, could tell you that there are so many advantages to being bilingual. I can’t actually claim them, myself (while I do understand quite a bit of French, I wouldn’t call myself bilingual). You can live in different places, work in either language (or both) and also you have access to twice as much arts, culture, and history – in the original language!

It’s an advantage for Business Time that Voss is our raid leader, because 1) he’s great at it but also 2) he’s often inadvertently hilarious. Sometimes it’s a matter of a colloquialism he missed, our just a difference in translation, or a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment. Fortunately for us, he’s a great sport about it. I’m sure that more than half of our “in” jokes have sprung up from some Voss-related misunderstanding. Voss jokes are so much a cornerstone of BT that back when we were working on heroic Lich King one of our members made this video.

The jokes:

Voss has a hard time with the word “horrors.” It tends to come out more like just plain old “whore.” Shambling Horrors takes on an all new-meaning, I’m sure you can imagine.

Our warlock, Dirtface, had a penchant for summoning mole machines smack in the middle of the raid.

Our mage, Fsob, is seldom content to remain in his natural form, leading to some confusion about just who or where he is at any given time.

Please note: the following video has coarse language and references to gnomes. Viewer discretion is advised.

As it happens, <Shambling Horrors> is now the name of our Horde-side sister guild. Poor Voss’ hapless hilarity doesn’t end there, though. Other things of note:

Our hunter nearly died when we were killing Marrowgar and Voss shouted, “OK, now get Kayla off!”

I had to explain why he might want to choose different phrasing the next time. Similarly, you never know when he might tell us all, “OK, now everyone come on the gnome!”

For some reason, from the first time we fought Shannox, Voss couldn’t help but call him “Shannon.” He wasn’t trying to be funny, the boss was just “Shannon” to him. (Below image credit goes to Searing Shammy).

This image came up in a Google image search for Shannox and I couldn't resist using it. It's from Searing Shammy, it is not my image!

“OK, here she comes!” he’d say. Naturally, this most unfeminine of bosses started a trend. You may be fighting Shannox and Ragnaros in the Firelands. BT is fighting Alice, Beth, Margeurite, and Barbara. Or, as Adgamorix said, “How about – Baleroc as a substitution for Baleroc? It’s catchy, has a good ring to it, and is easy to remember.” (It never caught on, though.)

I can’t even describe to you how hard I laughed the other night when Voss yelled into Mumble as we were fighting Ragnaros, “Alright guys, SPLITTING BOWEL!”

He insists that the difference between “blow” and “bowel” in this case is minimal (after all, if you were hit by Ragnaros’ Hammer you might suffer that effect) but I have to beg to differ. Splitting Bowel is so much more evocative! Given the well-documented prevalence of poop quests in the game, I wouldn’t put it past them to include it as a real boss ability.

I’m really resisting making a “wipe” joke here, I swear. We keep it classy!

Let’s just say that when it comes to having Voss as a raid leader, there’s seldom a dull moment – especially since he himself is so focused and serious. He is the perfect straight man to our admittedly sometimes adolescent humour. Although, he insisted that I had to add in his response to our teasing: “Mangez donc tous un char de marde!”

It means, “I think you are all so hilarious!” (Please note: This is not an actual translation. Don’t repeat this to a French-speaking person unless you want to pick a fight with them. If so, then by all means!)

We love you too, Voss.

What are your raid’s funny (or not so funny) “in” jokes? Is your raid leader, much like Voss, apt to be super serious, or are they cracking jokes along with you? One day we were joking that Voss just tunes us out (“He probably doesn’t even hear us!”) and about thirty seconds later he said, “Huh?” It’s probably the only way he can stay sane.

Comments on: "Voss-isms" (52)

hahaha. The shambling horrors problem happens to plain old english speakers, too. It sounded VERY much like our RL was saying “whore” all the time. He’d call out when one was about to spawn, and just say “Horror!” on mumble.

To much laughter.

Though, he is Canadian, so I guess he does speak another language then the rest of us.

Hehe…that’s awesome. I’ve always been around the serious kind of raid leaders, but playing on a EU server is obviously an unebbing flow of language funnies like that, thanks to the mixed crowd you get in most guilds. Our raidleader in vanilla was a dutch guy, and I remember us teasing him because he kept calling prot warriors “proc warriors”, even after we explained to him what a proc was. our frenchman would often sing during corpseruns (the endless kind you’d do from thorium point back down to MC), but I can’t repeat any of that here lol. :P

Haha, now I am incredibly curious about just what he was singing! I am actually fascinated by the European raiding scene, I imagine it must be so multicultural and interesting to have folks from many different countries. (I suppose it can get confusing too and might present an entirely different set of challenges!) We used to joke that our raid team was half-Canadian and half-Texan (3-4 Texans, 5 Canadians) but we don’t have that kind of cultural diversity. Have you written before about what it’s like to raid with possibly multiple language barriers or at the least, different country outlooks? Is it just something most EU raiders don’t even think about at all? If you ever feel like talking about it, I think it’d make a really interesting post and I’d love to read it!

One thing that seems to come up is that some people get the idea that because English isn’t their first language, it’s ok to swear like a trooper in it. I guess it seems like it’s not really swearing if they do it in another language, I dunno.

Not saying that everyone from not-England does that, and in fact it could be a pretty small minority, but it’s certainly noticable.

You are describing my (French) sister-in-law precisely! I actually said something to her about it once because everything was eff this and eff that and eff you – and I told her I thought that she didn’t really understand how strong those are (meant) to be in English, and could be inadvertently offensive to native English speakers. I’d agree that it can often be a problem. Perhaps it’s the case for an English speaker in another language as well, I’m not sure!

I usually find it’s English who swear the most. Actually, I had a couple of people telling me they couldn’t stop swearing because they were English and apparently it’s a part of their culture. (I’m not making it up.) On the other hand, I guess we can swear in our languages rather than in English.

@Vidyala
I have actually dedicated a longer article in the past on second language blogging and gaming. it came from a slightly different angle since it was inspired by some troll commenters I had received earlier, but it is indeed an interesting topic I have dwelled on in the past. In case you’d like to have a look sometime: http://raging-monkeys.blogspot.com/2011/02/absolute-zero.html:)

My old GM was from Israel and had a nack of turning most names into some sort of abomination of what the creator had initially intended, both for players and npcs alike. Arcanotron became Archavon, Magmatron was Magmaw. Zanez was Zanzil in his mouth. We even had a boomkin called Miemi (pronounced Meemee) which he only called Miami. She was so annoyed by this that she actually payed for a name change ^^ Fortunately he had a difficult time screwing up my very simple “Zinn”.

Fuzz (Achloryn) like to yell and call things, “DIRTY LIAR!” He also flubbed calling out cc in BoT once and told the hunter to trap the diangle, which we still haven’t let him forget. He provides us we plenty of amusement and we love him. :D

Trap the diangle, haha. I like the nonsensical raid things the best. Our shaman and I tend to be the ones spouting stupid things back and forth, a lot of the raid just generally ignores us. Things like, “HORDE APOLOGIST,” or really – anything is funny if you tack “apologist” on the end and then shout it at someone. (“FISH FEAST APOLOGIST.”)

Sadly, the only source of humour during my guild’s raids are the unintened sexual jokes made by our Guild Leader who, in his defense, can blame the dirty mind of his brother who lives with him (but who’s not a raider) which probably affects his unconscious.
Unfortunately for him the clows of the guild – those being one of the officers and myself – just can’t resist the opportunity to point them ou. >;p

That stuff may be low-brow, but still funny, haha. I think these types of jokes tend to be prevalent in raids because they’re “easy” and lighten any raid tension. I noticed that the number of “That’s what she said” jokes dropped shortly after I joined, though, because I can always reply dryly, “Yes…that IS what I said.” Our guild needs more women. ;p

I’m glad it came across the right way and not as any kind of mockery; I love Voss and he has a really good sense of humour about the occasional language slip-up. After all, HE’S bilingual and the rest of us aren’t, and raiding in his second language! Are you from Quebec or did you just live there for a time?

I lead raids for my guild, and although I’m not ccolorblind and I did pass kindergarten, I inevitably screw up shapes and colors when calling targets. “switch to square-I-mean-triangle-FUCK-I-meant-circle” is a direct quote :)

Haha. Your fortitude is commendable. Stuff like that is stupid, I know, but it makes me laugh every time. Incidentally, you made me glad that I mentioned the language in the video, so that you could put your headphones on! I’m trying to be conscientious when it comes to these things!

Some things I’ve been known to say: “Do you want front or back?” when we were discussing Shannox positioning back at the VERY beginning of 4.2. I think it was also my first Firelands raid, so, you know,leaving a good impression and all that :|

Trying to explain to party how I was doing a pull resulted in “pulling out”–thank heavens that everyone else was able to contain their laughter until after we killed everything.

Other gems:
-“I’d rather be beating on Rhyo’s legs” – When I was learning add pick-up for Rhyo.
-“I got stuck on meat” – Tanking ZG Panther boss and I didn’t move for a wave (apparently).
-“I need to be full” – explaining Chim to the healers.

That was about what I could find halfway through SSs…I’m sure there’s some other great ones, though I’m known to make the best comments in Vent. Last Wednesday (it’s recorded) I happened to say “The dog brings lust” about the BM hunter pet :|

Laughing so hard right now! XD We’ ve got a number of inside jokes with our raids too, but I don’t think any are quite as hilarious as Voss’ Shambling Whores:

– My previous off-tank liked to do random “Have Group” summons to odd places, while the rest of the was *trying* to get to the raid location.
– Every so often, I like to throw down a pony keg (or some other item that will attract many clicks), and then throw a mole machine on top of it.
– My raid takes great glee in pointing out any “that’s what she said jokes” (or as my friend and main healer says, “So sagt sie,” as there are some bilingual German jokes in the raid) that I walk into – which is to say, a lot
– Anytime I decide to use my “X-53 Touring Rocket” during a raid, I’ll say to vent, “Who wants to ride my rocket?”
– Everyone in the raid AND the guild enjoys my random rants about the “sexiness” of NPCs like Therazane and Beth’tilac (leads to many of them scolding my for cheating on Thera)
– When we’re clearing trash to bring on Shanny (what I call Shannox, since I’m too lazy to use the full name), we always have to kill at least one pack of turtles. Because Josh loves his turtles. Macros are involved.
– I have a habit of “talking” to Riplimb in vent as I tank him as if he were my misbehaving dog.
– When fighting Beth (I hope that one’s obvious; lol), I tell my team up top to “jump in her hole” to avoid Smoldering Devastation.
– There’s a debate between raid members as to whether Maloriak is a boy or girl (dungeon journals serve as no proof; haha)
– We had so many false starts on Kim (Chimaeron) due to various raiders (the main culprit being our ex-rogue, Mektin) accidentally right-clicking him, hitting the wrong button, etc. At one point, it was so bad that I refused to allow anyone to leave the entrance to the room, until I pulled Kim
– The elevator of death is a tough boss. ’nuff said.

These kinds of running gags, inside jokes and self-effacing comments keep me sane while leading raids. I love playing with a group who takes the raid seriously, but who don’t take themselves too seriously. Our bear tank is always “the fat one,” our pally gets jokes about not wearing enough pink to be a REAL paladin, our hunter and boomkin/tree (a couple) always need another beer, the DK who manages to die on every third trash pack is sacrificed to the loot gods for trash drops… and if I die at any time for any reason somebody always slips in “gg, more death strike IMO.”

Haha. I love this stuff, really. One I wasn’t able to work into the post was recently (for some reason or another) I thought that Voss had died at the end of a boss (I think it was our other warrior instead). He became really indignant, “I WASN’T DEAD,” so naturally we have to tease him mercilessly about it now. Every time we wipe, it’s “because Voss died,” or “there goes Voss again,” and “If only Voss could stay alive!”

LOL Vid, great post! I have been working on a post the last few weeks about our guild funnies during raids and now you’ve inspired me to finish it. So I’ll just share a few of our guild’s raid in-jokes (which as you know are funnier when you’re there than when you’re trying to tell it)

Our guild leader has a Left-Right dyslexia (we’re sure!) such as go left when he means right etc… so as you can imagine he has been banned from driving Rhyolith, due to us laughing our heads off at his bad driving (hit left – no i mean right!).

Our DK tank has a arachnid dyslexia. He calls scorpions, spiders. Fortunately in FL the spiders are nowhere near the scorpions or we’d be having problems. So we always call the scorpions spiders now.

We have a guy in our guild who’s English born and bred (so language is not an excuse!) who always mutilated people’s names in similar ways to Zinn’s guild leader mentioned above, but he also had random English words that he decided to pronounce differently than the rest of the world for no specific reason. Like Reliquary of Soul’s “deaden” ability would become deed-un. He now leads our rated battleground team and still insists on pronouncing mage as “madge” (to rhyme with badge). We’ve given up on trying to tell him to do otherwise, as long as we can understand what he’s trying to say!

Things that happened in my raid (translated for you English-speaking folks, of course):

– on the Val’kyr twins (ToC) our raid leader called “everyone, take black” when he meant to say white. The 21 people who listened to him died instantly (I wasn’t one of them because I never listen to him anyway). Since them I always take the opposite colour of what he tells me to take.
– in Firelands, we are also fighting Shannon, Betty, Reier-lith (~vomit-lith … someone mispronounced it once and it stuck … yuck!), Alice (or as one of our DKs insists: Alexstrasza), Majonaise and Rags (not very spectacular, I know).
– Someone tried to make elaborate art with fishfeasts in our raid as well, but someone ate it while he was doing it, so that instead of LOL there was only an )L.
– on Sindragosa, when due to a taunting error Sindy was showing the group her backside, our priestess yelled on top of her lung: “Dick (translated) in the raid!”
– the usual “Bite me!” or “Do me!” comments by the DPS on Lana’thel, of course
– a nice little instant where a certain owl of lazory terror (certainly not me!) pulled whole rooms of mobs with little more than “Oops” as a comment. It so happened that our raid leader held down his [W] when he yelled at said owl: “One more ‘Oops’ and I’ll kick you from- … Oops!” and went on to embrace the next packs of mobs.
– While talking on Vent, I repeatedly pulled aggro from a just-occasionally-tanking tank and kept informing him of it. As he was quite the talker himself, he explained to me: “I can’t talk and tank at the same time.” (he meant to say he couldn’t walk backwards and tank at the same time. Choose for yourself which is better) He kept on talking the whole time.
– many more things that have escaped me…

My current guild mostly just blames everything that ever happens on one guy – even if, usually these days, he isn’t actually in the raid. Also bacon.

My previous guild, the one I started playing WoW because of, which sadly went entirely inactive a few months back, enjoyed intentionally misreading monster abilities and such, something which I also enjoyed. Notably, pronouncing any monster attack “buffet”, like the style of cafeteria serving, instead of like you’re being pushed around by air. Sadly, I can’t think of any other words swaps, but I know there were a few. I miss T7S.

There was the time we had a new guild member, and I wasn’t sure if it was a he or a she, because the voice *could* have been female, if just a bit low and throat-y. Eventually, we talked on vent one day when he (as it turned out) couldn’t make it to the raid, and I mentioned that I had not been sure of his gender for some time because his voice sounded so deepthroat-y. … yeah.

And then there was the time we were doing Naxxramas, and at the 4 Horsemen, I was assigned to one of the guys who ride to the corners in the back. And I said “Can you explain how that works, I’ve never done it in the back”…

A few #Waypoint gems:
– Our fearless Generalissimosan, Snack, yelling “STACK ON THE DRAGON’S ASS” as a legitimate raid call.
– Our resto druid’s baby cooing over vent when said druid was to call out Pillar of Flame on Magmaw and Snack saying “YOU HEARD THE BABBY. MOVE YOUR ASS”
– Our DK tank /flexing at the bosses as they die xD

Great post – it reminded me several times of all the kooky things my raid does on a nightly basis. I’m convinced that’s why I stick around night after night. Wipes suck, but if you went down laughing then it was probably still worth it.

But I have to say, the most amount of fun I have had in-game with a player who didn’t speak English as his first language was a little Frenchman who went by the name of Lightpower. Everything that came out of his mouth was pure gold.

uuhm well right as we started on magmaw, I was doing the whole yelling and stuff over teamspeak… our dk had problems picking up and kiting the worms and from time to time they first ran to a random raid member to, well, breed inside him or what it’s called in english… (german native)
onced a wormling reached me I called out “healing on me, I got one inside”. Well there was no healing inc because they all were occupied trying to breathe again…